


Ain't That Kind of Fairy Tale

by Starrie_Wolf



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Gen, Harry Hart Lives, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 14:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7175489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrie_Wolf/pseuds/Starrie_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every good story should begin with “once upon a time”, and end with “and they lived happily ever after”.</p><p>Real life ain’t that kind of fairy tale, except this time it just might be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't That Kind of Fairy Tale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crescent_gaia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescent_gaia/gifts).



> A/N: Seldom do I get the chance to write for a British fandom, and I really enjoyed it ^o^

Even being drunk on post-coital euphoria couldn’t banish the dread pooling in the pit of his stomach like molten lead, the moment he set foot on the plane once more.

Merlin was being a real guv there, just sitting in the plane cooling his heels the whole time Eggsy was… _indisposed_ , like he was really Eggsy’s pilot instead of his sort-of maybe boss. He glanced up as Eggsy stomped in, Roxy’s voice chattering on in the background, and from the sound of things they were discussing whether Merlin could put a rush job on that bespoke suit for her.

There was a transcript of a phone call to his Mum taped to one of the screens on Merlin’s desk, just a short exchange, really, saying that _she’s fine, Daisy’s fine, she’s happy he’s okay, and won’t Eggsy please call her back soon?_

“Oh, is that Eggsy? He’s done with the clean-up on the base already?”

“Aye, we’re on our way to you.”

Merlin didn’t tell her what he’d been doing?

And then the reality sunk in – Rox, goddamn it, he’d just _left_ her stranded in the middle of fucking nowhere, hadn’t he, while he was off having a good time, trying to distract himself?

Because he couldn’t lie to himself, that was all that Swedish princess had been. Just a distraction.

Harry was dead.

The words rearranged themselves in his head, and still they didn’t make any sense. One plus one didn’t equal to three. The sun couldn’t rise in the west. Harry Hart couldn’t be dead.

Except he was, because Eggsy had fucking _seen_ it on the man’s own laptop, seen the point-blank gunshot to the head. That wasn’t the kind of thing a human being – gentleman or not, underneath that suit, Eggsy had known all too well that Harry was still just a man – could survive from.

It took him a few moments to realise that the plane was taxiing in for a landing, and another to spot Roxy’s suit silhouetted against the snow, a tiny spot of colour almost completely swallowed by the vast expanse of white. Had it really been an hour since they’d left Valentine’s base already? Or did Rox land closer to the base? He supposed that one couldn’t really choose where precisely they were going to end up, when they were falling 120 thousand kilometres out of the sky.

Or something. Fuck, Math had never been his strong suit. If he’d known, Harry would probably have tried to sneak that into his comportment lessons too, with pointed words like, “a gentleman must always be able to balance his own books” or something.

If he’d known.

If he was still here.

Eggsy would have submitted to a hundred more etiquette lessons just to have Harry _look_ at him one more time; look at him like he wasn’t a failure, wasn’t someone to be pitied or thrown aside or forgotten like yesterday’s tabloid news.

Like someone worth his time.

Like someone worthy of being a Kingsman, except not really, because Eggsy had already gone and fucked that up too.

It had to be some kind of record. Harry’d served for decades, gone on a hundred missions, and not a single one of them made the news. This was Eggsy’s first rodeo, and he’d already blown it to hell and high water.

A loud beeping noise coming from Merlin’s desk broke into his reverie, and at first he thought he’d imagined the sound, but no, Roxy’s head too had snapped up from her exhausted slump in the other armchair.

Who’d be calling Merlin _now_?

“Computer, display Caller ID.”

Eggsy glanced over at the door leading to the cockpit, and was surprised to see it’d been left open this whole time. Just how out of it had he been?

“Caller unknown.”

At first Eggsy thought it was his stomach dropping, but why would he even be feeling that way when he didn’t even know who was – wait. It wasn’t him. It was the _plane_. He barely caught onto one of the armrests before he was thrown against a wall, but Roxy wasn’t so fortunate.

“What?” she called, somehow sounding concerned and not the slightest bit pissed off at her unexpected introduction to the carpeted floor. “Merlin, what’s wrong?”

The phone went silent, but it was like he hadn’t even heard her question.

“Computer, trace call location. Activate priority trace alpha.”

The plane levelled out again, but Eggsy kept a cautious hand on the wall just in case as the two of them moved towards the cockpit. “Merlin?”

“Trace complete. Location: Kentucky, USA.”

The bottom really _did_ drop out of his stomach at the sound of those words. Suddenly, leaning against the wall and sliding down to sit on the floor was far more important than interrogating Merlin.

“What.”

“What?” echoed Roxy, and then, perhaps not surprisingly, turned her shrewd gaze on him instead. “What’s in Kentucky, Eggsy?”

He managed to suppress the choking miasma of disbelief warring with hope in his throat long enough to croak out a single word.

“Harry.”

* * *

The explanation was simple.

There wasn’t a single electronic device in the world that Merlin’s program couldn’t hack into.

Not unless he’d written the code for it himself.

“What if someone took his phone?” asked Roxy, not unkindly, but no, apparently Merlin had already accounted for that. The phone was coded to Harry’s biometrics. Unless someone was sick enough to press a dead man’s hand to his phone long enough for it to scan his fingerprints – and Richmond Valentine was rather unambiguously dead, Eggsy had made sure to check for a pulse – they were operating under the assumption that Harry did it himself.

The flight to Kentucky took simultaneously no time at all and far too long.

* * *

Merlin consulted his phone one last time, before climbing up the stairs to what was clearly a hospital. Eggsy didn’t know why his heart stuttered at the sight – it was a _head wound_ after all, where else was he expecting to find Harry?

The hospital was a _riot_ , just like every single street they’d marched through to get there, and Eggsy didn’t doubt the UK was in equally bad shape. ( _How many people had those SIM cards? How many died before he could get Valentine’s hand off that table?_ ) They had their work cut out for them – but first.

First.

Merlin took the stairs at a brisk walk, completely bypassing reception. Eggsy would have demanded they move faster, but even in his impatience he could see that the steady stream of stretchers on the other side made that prospect difficult.

It was a small eternity before they reached one of the doors, and Eggsy experienced a brief moment of blinding panic _what if Harry wasn’t inside what if it was a false alarm after all what if –_

Merlin pushed the door open.

Eggsy thought his vision whited out for a moment, but no, that was just the sterile white of the room, and the bleached pallor of the man lying in the bed, the heart monitor hooked up to him clearly displaying the up-and-down sine waves of his heartbeat.

Alive.

Roxy laid a hand on his arm, and abruptly Eggsy realised he’d forgotten to breathe.

“It’s okay, Eggsy,” her voice was low in his ear, and she pulled him into a hug right there in the doorway, careful to make sure she wasn’t blocking his view of the bed, because Rox was brilliant like that. Eggsy let his arms come up around her, taking deep lungfuls of air.

Harry was alive.


End file.
